*Picture is of the house this poem was written about. Located in Colrain, MA. Near the MA/VT border ... about 50 minutes from where we live.



“ 'Is there anybody there?' said the Traveller,
Knocking on the moonlit door;
And his horse in the silence champed the grasses
Of the forest's ferny floor:

But only a host of phantom listeners
That dwelt in the lone house then
Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight
To that voice from the world of men”

..from the poem entitled "The Listeners" by W. De La Mare

The house stood on the side of the road
tilted and settling into the rocky ground
and its rock foundation - like a tired woman
sitting down after a long day of hard work and chores.

Next to it, separated by a catwalk
made just for the Nor’easters that New England
is famous for, was the quintessential red barn.
Its hayloft door hanging open like the tongue of a dog in July.

Stalls and rocky hard ground stood abandoned inside.
Silence grew instead of crops.
A crumbling silo, that was once tall and proud,
stood on an ailing farm that once was productive and cared for.

Who built that catwalk? Who fed the horses and cows
every morning before sunrise? Who tended to the chickens,
baled the hay, filled the silo and came into the kitchen of
the old white farmhouse at the end of the day, hungry for his dinner?

Who swept the floors of the large kitchen, gazed out the back door
looking to see if her husband was done with the morning chores yet and would
want some breakfast? Who stepped out onto the back porch and called
out that dinner was ready? Who took pride in her home?




Brushing away memories like cobwebs, we walked the land.
We stood at the door of the old barn, now tilting like a aged man without his cane,
and saw the evidence of hard work and pride that had been let go....
eerie in its silence as if it were waiting for a new life to begin.

We peered through the windows of the house.
Walls that once held plaster, showed the bones of the boards beneath.
The front porch sagged and the back porch had fallen to the ground in ruins.
The floors inside were sagging to the point that no one could walk on them.

We saw the remains of a rose printed wallpaper in one of the rooms.
We saw a once beautiful home that someone had built and lived in ...
reduced to the sad state now called “inhabitable” in the real estate listing.
A house, barn and outbuildings that could only be razed or burnt down now.

Sadness soaked the land and filled our nostrils.
Memories of its past life as a happy home
buzzed around us and filled us with longing.
We wished to go back in time to see it in its prime.

As we got into our car and backed out, we could almost see
the faces of the people, who once claimed the land and house home,
peering out at us and calling to us......“Come back!”, “Save us!”...”Stay!”.
Sadly, we could not.